At first they blamed pigeons. Birds had been spotted flying around the horn shaped antenna at Bell Laboratories. There had even been remnants of a nest. The house-sized antenna, designed to received signals from Telstar and other satellites in the 60's, was reinspected and swept clean, but the problem continued. Still, a loud static sound emitted from laboratory receivers at very high frequencies.

The static came and went, loud, and then soft. It was present no matter which direction or angle the antenna was positioned. Gradually, engineers noted that it occurred in a cycle that repeated every 23 hours and 56 minutes- just short of a solar day. This cycle of time has since been called LST (Local Sidereal Time).

LST is a measure of the passing overhead of the center of our galaxy, The Milky Way. What Bell Laboratory engineers had accidentally picked up were the radio emissions of billions of suns in our Galaxy along with the remnants of energy from the proposed "Big Bang," which started creation. In LST, high noon would occur when Sagittarius, the galactic center, sits directly over the observer. LST happens independent of the Sun's position.

So what's this got to do with (ESP) Extra Sensory Perception? The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, has discovered a cycle during which ESP practitioners are "more" and "less" accurate in their abilities to "see" or predict events. When scientists examined the accuracy of thousands of ESP predictions, along with documented times these anomalous cognitions took place, they were stunned. They repeated their studies. The precognative cycle coincided with LST.

Even more surprising, the peak of efficiency was not, as you might expect, at galactic high noon. Peak efficiency was repeatedly at 13:30 LST. This would place the center of our Galaxy closer to the horizon, instead of overhead.

Theorists have proposed "warped space" and the possibility of some optimum angle of entry as reasons for the observed effect being "off center." Others have suggested that we look at the area in the Milky Way which corresponds to this phenomenon for the solution. Still others have been content to trivialize the study, saying, in effect, "So what"?

If psychic researchers are correct, synchronizing ESP attempts with 13:30 Local Sidereal Time could lead to more efficient uses of psychic talents . It also may give us some thought material about the possibilities out there.

Despite the lack of an explanation for this phenomenon, it is none the less real science, based on solid statistics and methodology, and has been found worthy of publication.